SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/28/2020 9:02 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Perversion by Omission”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:43
Message of the
verse: “43
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate
your enemy.’”
As we looked at the passage from
Lev. 19:18 we see a difference than what the Pharisees had come up with: “’You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any
grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the
LORD.” The highlighted portion of the
verse in Leviticus is what is different than the traditions of the Pharisees as
it was simply inconceivable that they should care for any other person as much
as they cared for themselves.
In my Bible reading for today I was
reading from the 22nd chapter of Matthew among other chapters and in
that chapter one of the Pharisees asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment
in the Law and His answer was that we are to love the Lord and then added that we
are to love our neighbors, so we realize that the Pharisees knew the correct
way, but chose not to follow it.
I suppose that this same kind of
problem exists in churches today as they teach things that they think are
correct, but when it comes down to Scriptures they are not correct. The problem with the scribes and the
Pharisees is that they loved themselves more than they loved to keep the Word
of God in their lives. They thought that
they were a step above all the people and let them know that. The same is true in our country with the
majority of the politicians in our country who are voted in by the people only
to think that they are better than the people who voted them in.
As believers we are to love the Lord
first and foremost and then love our neighbors and the parable of the Good Samaritan
found in the book of Luke shows who are neighbors are.
John MacArthur writes “But the
standard God had given the Jews was supernatural rather than natural, and they
must have chafed under it, because they knew they could not live up to it in
their own power. Besides that, they did
not want to live up to it, and therefore simply excised ‘as yourself’ from God’s
standard of love. Our example will
always be our Lord Jesus Christ as He left heaven to become a man and He did it
because of His great love for us, and then took our sin upon Him on the cross
so that we could then have His righteousness that the Father now sees all
believers.
MacArthur goes on to explain “Along
with that significant omission, tradition had narrowed the meaning of neighbor
to include only those people they preferred and approved of—which amounted
basically to their own kind. Such
obviously profane people as tax-collectors and ordinary sinners were despised
as outcasts and as not being worthy even to be considered Jews.
We know that the tax-collectors were
Jews and they prayed upon their own people becoming rich because they collected
too much taxes so that they could become rich and that is why the Jews hated
them, but Jesus, as seen in Matthew and Zacchaeus who both became
believers.
MacArthur concludes “But even that
restriction of ‘neighbor’ was not narrow enough. The scribes and Pharisees also despised and
looked down on the common people. They
dismissed those who believed in Jesus by saying, ‘No one of the rulers or
Pharisees has believed in Him, has he?
But this multitude which does not know the Law is accursed’ (John
7:48-49). Ironically, the proud and
arrogant religious leaders who knew, but perverted, the law disdained as ‘accused’
the common people who they felt did not know it.” This paragraph kind of reminds me of being a
deplorable.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Learn to
love others as Christ loves me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the
Lord that the little trip we had planned for today will work out.
9/28/2020 9:29
AM
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